The Christmas holidays are coming to an end now, time to concentrate on your exams so you can go to college/ get a place at uni/ get a job…. the pressure 😂
A levels were probably one of the best experiences of my life!I began them in September 2013 and finished them in June 2015 achieveing the grades BBC! This was probably one of my proudest moments.
I was aiming for three C’s and would have been disappointed if I got less.
So the key to success… Study, revise and understand the exam. I understand the format of A levels has changed since I left but I believe the principles are still the same.
Psychology
This subject is mainly fact based so all you have to do is remember the facts and you’ll do fine. In my mock in January I got a U because I hadn’t properly studied it as I was waiting for my teacher to finish teaching it, whereas in the actual exam in June I got an A in this particular section of it. If I were to do it again, I would probably start revising in October/November time (don’t worry it’s not too late to start now, I started revising now and got a B overall so don’t panic!) If your teacher is getting the facts from a book then get ahead! Even if not, learn your own researchers. My second year was very confusing as my teacher wasn’t the best and told us to borrow a book from the library but then contradicted herself by giving us different researchers in lesson, so when I was trying to practise with my friends we all had different researchers to one another. Very confusing. I stuck to the book as it was AQA approved.
Tip number two for psychology is don’t focus on the first exam because it’s a few days ahead of the second one! A few days is not enough to learn the content for a whole exam.
You need to focus on both of them equally up until a few days before the first exam because they’re both worth the same!
Another mistake I made was focusing too much on the exam that I knew I was good at, learning and trying to remember a whole new exam when you have just got to grips with the first one is scary, but it needs to be done! You’ll regret it on the morning of the exam remembering all the hours you spent procrastinating watching Netflix or just wasting time in general.
In the second year I also re sat one of my first year exams that I think I got a C on, I just wanted to get the best grade possible and when you’re doing A2, AS seems like a doddle! I’d definitely recommend it, I think if i didn’t re sit it I would have got a C overall.
English language
My English Language class was very small in the first year there was about 15 of us and in the 2nd year, 6 of us, so our teacher could do a lot of 1 to 1 time which I think really helped and was so much better than being in a class of 30 at school! Our teacher was really nice and always bought us food which was good motivation 😂
English language is a mixture of fact and your opinion. You need to know all the verbs, adjectives etc but you need to be able to apply them to real pieces of text.
In my first year we had the basic language stuff such as annotating a piece of text but the second section of the exam was child language aquistiton where you had to learn how children aquire language and were given some texts you had to apply it to.
In the second year the first section was the same as the first year but you had to go into more detail and the second part was the history of the English Language, so everything from the Romans/ Vikings to when the first dictionary was written etc, everything that has had an effect on our language. I found this really interesting and enjoyed it! I think I got an A on the exam because I didn’t hate it! The teacher has a big effect on how you perform, which moves me swiftly on to English Literature.
English Literature
My grades fluctuated in this subject, in the first year exam I got an A, in the second year exam I got an E. With the coursework at a B (AS) and C (A2) I got a C overall which was a relief.
In the first year for my coursework I studied twelfth night by Shakespeare, Lysistrata, and in the exam we did the kite runner, pride and predudice, we also had to study two poets, we chose John Keats and Christina Rosetti. In the AS exam I got an A however, in the A2 exam I got an E, I don’t know whether it was because we changed teacher and my new teacher wasn’t any help at all or if the work just got too hard. In the second year, in the coursework I studies Rosetti poems and Little women (you could chose anything you wanted as long it was literary to an extent. In the exam we studied, Macbeth, Frankenstein and The Changeling. I honestly have no clue where I went wrong all my teacher could tell me was it felt like I was stuck in some mud and couldn’t get out when she read it, I was just like brilliant, you going to tell me anything else about how to improve it? 😂
So overall I got BBC which means I can go to uni in the future if I want to, I like the fact that the options there for me if I don’t find an apprenticeship!
This is a photo of my final results sheet, showing my first year and second year results
Ennaoj 